Call Down the Hawk
A Latouche County Mystery
Sheila SimonsonISBN 978-1-56474-597-2
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication date: September 15, 2017
Call Down the Hawk centers on two victims, Frank August and Bill Hough, both of whom enjoy conflict for its own sake. Hawk Farm in the flood plain of the Columbia is one focus of trouble, what with the suicide of Bill Hough and his daughter’s trial by fire. But the August mansion on the bluff above the farm proves to be another focus when Jane August’s father, Frank, vanishes amid charges of fiscal malfeasance. Undersheriff Rob Neill is called to the scene after a bulldozer in the orchard below the mansion uncovers August’s corpse. However, until Chief Madeline Thomas of the Klalos clears the murk of violence from the land, Rob won’t be able to get at the truth.

On the shores of beautiful Lake Como in Roman Italy, a Greek tragedy has taken place. Twenty years later, a skeleton falls out of a wall in Pliny’s villa, bearing mute witness to family secrets and crimes.

Pliny the Younger is intelligent about everything but women. He agrees to his wife’s and mother’s wishes to marry off his lover, Aurora, to another slave, but neglects telling her until the wedding! To add to his problems, when building a wing onto his Lake Como villa, workmen discover a skeleton. As is Pliny’s habit, he launches a scientific investigation of the crime, but soon receives anonymous warnings and threats to cease. Then his wife, Livia, is kidnapped, with the ransom being an unknown document. He must find and rescue her, with the help of his friend Tacitus and the tracking skills of Aurora—who has personal problems of her own. Livia’s and Pliny’s fathers are involved, as family secrets and deaths two decades old rear their ugly heads before the adventure i.s done.

As in the
earlier books, a glossary of Roman terms and a list of historic and fictional characters are included.

Albert A. Bell, Jr. is a college history professor and novelist living in Michigan. In addition to his Roman mysteries, Bell has written contemporary mysteries, middle-grade novels, and nonfiction. He maintains a website devoted to Pliny the Younger, as well as his author website.

Water Signs
A Jeri Howard Mystery
Janet DawsonISBN 978-1-56474-586-6
232 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication date: April 7, 2017Change is the only constant, and change is altering the East Bay landscape, especially on the waterfront, where Oakland PI Jeri Howard learns that greed is a potent ingredient in the murder of a former coworker.

Oakland, California, is a city shaped by water. The waterfront, home to the ship and rail yards, is also ripe for development. There’s lots of money to be made, so greed and crime inevitably follow. PI Jeri Howard looks into the murder of a former coworker who was a security guard at a construction site on the Embarcadero. It was a surprise when Cal Brady’s body washed up on the Estuary shoreline. But Jeri is certain Cal’s death was no accident, and she’s determined to find out who killed him, and why.

Janet Dawson is the author of twelve novels about PI Jeri Howard. Kindred Crimes won the St. Martin’s Press/PWA best first PI novel contest, also earning Shamus, Macavity, and Anthony nominations. Another in the series, Bit Player, was shortlisted for a Golden Nugget Award. Dawson’s short stories include a Shamus nominee and a Macavity winner, and other novels include her California Zephyr series. She is past president of the Northern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and lives in the East Bay region.

Maggie Summer moves to Maine, but finds living in a small town more complicated, and deadly, than she’d dreamed.

Antique print dealer Maggie Summer is excited and nervous. She’s taken a sabbatical from teaching and moved to Maine to run an antiques mall with the man in her life, Will Brewer, and finally adopt the child she’s been longing for. She’s hoping the change in her life will bring her everything she’d dreamed of. But springtime in Maine isn’t exactly what she’d anticipated. Brook, the troubled girl who could soon be her daughter, says she doesn’t want to be adopted. Maggie is relieved when Brook is excited to see seals in the Madoc River. Seals remind the girl of her biological mother, and could be the key to Brook’s accepting a new life with Maggie. But when someone begins shooting those seals, Maggie’s frantic. What if Brook finds out? And then Will confesses a secret in his past, a young man is murdered, Brook will be visiting in a few days…and Maggie wonders if moving to Maine was the biggest mistake of her life.

Lea Wait has been an antiques dealer (fourth-generation) since 1977. Besides her Agatha Award-nominated eight-book mystery series about antique print dealer Maggie Summer, she also writes books for young people, and a new mystery series, Mainely Needlepoint. The mother of four adopted Asian daughters, now grown, she lives in Maine with her artist husband.Read more about this bookOrder information

When murder happens in the small town of Lincoln Point CA, there aren’t many degrees of separation between the victim and retired teacher Gerry Porter. How can she stay away from the investigation when the crime scene is the venue for her marriage to Henry Baker? But this time, nephew Detective Skip Gowen tries to discourage Gerry’s and granddaughter Maddie’s efforts to solve “The Case.” He couldn’t live with himself if the murderer learns of their efforts and comes after them.Margaret Grace is the pen name of Camille Minichino, a lifelong miniaturist and the author of four different mystery series. She’s past president and a board member of Northern Calif. Sisters in Crime, and she teaches science at Golden Gate University and writing at Bay Area schools.Read more about this bookOrder information

The California Zephyr speeds across the western United States, with Death dealing the cards for the highest stakes in the game. April 1953.

Zephyrette Jill McLeod is back on the rails, aboard the fabled train called the California Zephyr. Heading west from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area, Jill looks forward to seeing family and friends. She has learned to expect and deal with just about anything, from troublesome passengers to long-lost relatives to high-stakes poker games. The stakes just got higher. Death has a seat at the table.Read more about this bookOrder information

Maggie MacGowen’s grandmother sowed carrots in the spring; in August she reaps bones. On the family estate in Normandy, an accidentally excavated skull causes a social media sensation, dredging up psychic scars left by the wartime German Occupation. In their youth, Grand-mere and other villagers had cut the throats of an entire brutal Nazi platoon. Now the grim discovery prompts tourists, the soldiers’ descendants, the mass media, and vulture-like war-memorabilia dealers to flock to the formerly quiet farm. Then a young woman is murdered….Read more about this bookOrder information

It‘s April 1616, and William Shakespeare is mortally ill, felled, they say, by a fever. But when he calls his estranged friend Constable Simon Saddler to his bedside, Shakespeare tells him that his illness is no fever, but poison. When the poet dies just days later, Saddler feels compelled to investigate his old friend‘s death to discover, not just who murdered him, but how a man who was once as close as a brother was moved to cuckold Simon and split their friendship apart. The trail is long but before it‘s over, Simon finds himself wrapped up in two murders, and a conspiracy that reaches to the king‘s own doorstep. Read more about this bookOrder information

Affable young parking valet Tyler Benson, a master of bad timing, is accidentally involved in cases of auto theft and murder on the lot at Alba, an upscale Seattle restaurant. There‘s a body in a parked car, and someone shooting at tech zillionaire Scott Duckworth. Mysterious Italian beauty Flavia Torcelli and even Tyler‘s spectacularly unsuccessful dad seem somehow connected to the crime wave. The more Tyler tries to sort things out, the more the police are convinced he‘s the guilty party.… Oh, and a collection of inept but homicidal Russian mafiosi seems to be after him, too.Read more about this bookOrder information

Perhaps Manhattan, like Christmas, is best seen through the eyes of a child. Gerry Porter provides both magical experiences for granddaughter Maddie when a SuperKrafts manager takes them to New York City for a huge crafts fair. They get to work on both making miniatures and solving crimes, the detecting duos favorite pastimes. All this, plus Rockefeller Center and Radio City, too! But a crafty murderer wants to make sure they dont make it safely home again to California.Read more about this bookOrder information

Cold Trail
A Jeri Howard Mystery
Janet Dawson978-1-56474-555-2
216 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication date: April 7, 2015Jeri Howards brother, Brian, has been missing for four days before she is notified. The trail is getting colder as the anxious PI searches for Brian, across Sonoma County for clues to explain why he disappeared. Shed thought Brians life was in great shape. But her investigation uncovers cracks in his marriage and problems with his job. To complicate matters, theres a body on a boat along with Brians MedicAlert bracelet, and two police detectives who think Brian is involved in the homicide. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking .Read more about this bookOrder information

The Villa of Horrors
Plinys servant Aurora, who is also the forbidden love of his life, has played Good Samaritan to a woman who claims to be searching for her missing husband. Thinking he can help the woman, Pliny steps in, assisted, as usual, by his friend Tacitus. But the situation turns into a web of deception and intrigue when they discover evidence of a horrific murder while searching the countryside for clues to the whereabouts of the missing man. After Aurora is injured, Plinys involvement becomes personal. Hes even desperate enough to ask Regulus, his longtime sworn enemy, for help when the case brings him to the malevolent attention of the emperor Domitian.

Albert A. Bell, Jr. is a college history professor and novelist living in Michigan. In addition to his Roman series, Bell has written contemporary mysteries, middle-grade novels, and nonfiction. He maintains a website devoted to Pliny the Younger (www.pliny-mysteries.com), as well as his author website.Read more about this bookOrder information

Shadows on a Maine Christmas
An Antique Print Mystery
Lea Wait978-1-56474-547-7
224 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95Auld Acquaintance Can Be Murder
Antique print dealer Maggie Summer has come to Maine for a storybook Christmas with her beloved Will Brewer and his Great-Aunt Nettie, who has gathered together her longtime friends for holiday celebrations. Maggie and Will love each other, although Maggie is determined to adopt children and Will has misgivings. But this problem is put on hold when Maggie hears cryptic references by Aunt Netties old friends to buried secrets from their youth. One elderly woman suffers from dementia, remembering those past events better than the gifts she just opened. Will she blurt out information about an old crime so dangerous that someone would commit murder to prevent its being revealed? Blackmail and murder are only the beginning. It may be a Merry Christmasbut who will still be around to see in a Happy New Year?

Lea Wait has been an antiques dealer (fourth-generation) since 1977. Besides her Agatha Award-nominated seven-book mystery series about antique print dealer Maggie Summer, she also writes books for young people. The mother of four adopted Asian daughters, now grown, she lives in Maine with her artist husband.Read more about this bookOrder information

Madness in Miniature
The Miniature Series
Margaret GraceISBN 978-1-56474-543-9
246 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: April 7, 2014Think Globally, Murder Locally
a craft superstore and a murderer come to townThe grand opening of a giant chain crafts store is both good and bad news for miniaturist Gerry Porter. But when the big event is accompanied by an earthquake and a murder in the store, theres plenty of opportunity for Gerry and her computer-gifted granddaughter Maddie to help the police investigate. Did the New Yorkers bring crime to quiet Lincoln Point, or are the towns dispossessed small-business people responsible? From querying suspects to drawing up alibi charts, Gerry applies her insights to various issues of personal relationsbut can she solve her own with her BFF, Henry Baker?

Margaret Grace is the pen name of Camille Minichino, author of three different mystery series. As Grace she has written seven Miniature Mysteries (and has created many miniature scenes as charitable donations); under her own name she writes the periodic table series, and as Ada Madison, a new series of mathematical mysteries. Shes a retired physicist, is on the staff at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and teaches science and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area.Read more about this bookOrder information

Secrets taken to the grave may not stay buriedFilmmaker Maggie MacGowen learns the hard way that going home again can be deadly. While clearing out her deceased fathers desk, Maggie discovers that he had locked away potential evidence in a brutal unsolved murder thirty years earlier that rocked the close-knit community where she grew up. When she begins to ask questions of family and old friends, it quickly becomes clear that there are people in that seemingly tranquil multi-ethnic Berkeley neighborhood who will go to lethal lengths to prevent the truth from coming out. With the help of her new love, Jean-Paul Bernard, Maggie uncovers secrets about the murdered Vietnamese mother of a good friend and learns how the crime affectedand continues to affectthe still close-knit neighborhood. The more she finds out, the greater the threat of violence becomes, not only for the long-time neighborhood residents, but even for Maggie herself.

Edgar Award winner Wendy Hornsby is the author of ten previous mysteries, eight of them featuring Maggie MacGowen. She is a recently retired professor of history living in California.Read more about this bookOrder information

Death in the Ashes
A Fourth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger
Albert A. Bell, Jr.ISBN 978-1-56474-532-3
270 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: September 9, 2013

Secrets Buried in the Ruins of PompeiiA few years after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, where he lost his adoptive father and mentor, Pliny the Younger is asked by his friend Aurelia to help her husband Calpurnius, who has been accused of murder in Naples. Pliny has solved previous crimes, but never before has so much time and distance elapsed before his arrival on the murder scene nor has he carried so much emotional baggage. With the help of his wisecracking sidekick Tacitus, he now must investigate cunning plots by some descendants of Augustus, which include murders and babies switched at birth. One fortunate circumstance in Plinys detective activities is that the hardened ash crust makes good impressions of hand- and foot-prints. But now, for the first time, Pliny must swallow his fears and ghastly memories and face a deadly challenge in the ruins of a buried villa.

Albert A. Bell, Jr. is a college history professor and novelist living in Michigan. In addition to his Roman series, Bell has written contemporary mysteries, middle-grade novels, and nonfiction.Read more about this bookOrder information

Death Rides the RailsDecember 23, 1952. A transcontinental train is stopped cold by a rockslide in a remote Colorado canyon. Theres a murderer aboard, one who has already killed, and will kill again unless stopped. The California Zephyr, with its run from Oakland to Chicago and back, was famous for 21 years for its Vista-Domes, providing a 360-degree view of the spectacular Western scenery. It is a veritable small city on tracks, populated by passengers from all walks of life and a large crew whose duty it is to keep them safe. Zephyrette Jill McLeod is the passengers primary point of contact. Shes armed for any emergencywith a first-aid kit, a screwdriver, and her knowledge of human nature. But can she figure out a clever plot and stop a ruthless killer?.

This is Janet Dawsons second stand-alone mystery novel. Her series PI Jeri Howard has sleuthed through ten books, the first of which won the St. Martins/PWA award and other mystery award nominations. Dawson was nominated in 2012 for Left Coast Crimes Golden Nugget Award for Bit Player. She is past president of the MWA Norcal chapter, and works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.Read more about this bookOrder information

Beyond Confusion
A Latouche County Library Mystery
Sheila SimonsonISBN 978-1-56474-519-4
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95The 2008 election is over, and librarian Meg McLean is thrilled that the library levy passed. In spite of an economy in free-fall, Megs personal and professional lives are thriving. Tribal Chief Madeline Thomas of the Klalos offers an inherited farmhouse for a branch librarybut the farm was owned by a relative of Megs rival and vengeful enemy, library administrator Marybeth Jackman, who plans to contest the will. Disasters begin to strikethe farmhouse is vandalized; the chiefs home is firebombed; and when Marybeth falls to her death, Meg becomes a murder suspect. Echoing Marybeths malice, pro-censorship protestors violently attack the countys bookmobile. Meg and her romantic interest, Undersheriff Rob Neill, must confront religious zealotry, bullying, and troubled mother-daughter relationships to penetrate the morass of bad karma and a maze of crimes.Read more about this bookOrder information

Her Brother's Keeper
A Joan Spencer Mystery
Sara Hoskinson FrommerISBN 978-1-56474-525-5240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Joan Spencer, the viola-playing protagonist of Frommers small-town Indiana mysteries, doesnt look for trouble but it keeps finding her. A few days before her daughters wedding, the last thing Joan needs is something else to worry aboutbut here it is, ready or not. Her ex-con brother Dave was the family black sheep, but years have passed since theyve heard from him. Always the nonconformist, hes arrived way too early. Meanwhile Joan has to keep up with work, in addition to all the planning, even for a simple wedding; the grooms mother disapproves of everyone and everything; and Joans own mother-in-law, whose mind is failing fast, lands smack in the middle of a murder Read more about this bookOrder information

Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding
An Antique Print Mystery
Lea WaitISBN 978-1-56474-531-6240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
October on Cape Cod is always beautiful, and antique print dealer Maggie Summer is happy to visit there to help with her best friends wedding preparations. Maggie doesnt anticipate the murder of a neighbor, nor being called into service as a counselor and interpreter. Is she really essential to the investigation, or is she avoiding a critical discussion with the man she loves? Before she knows the answer, theres another murder and a hurricane and then Maggie herself becomes a target.Read more about this bookOrder information

The Hanging
A Maggie MacGowen Mystery
Wendy HornsbyISBN 978-1-56474-526-2
254 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95When her television series is abruptly canceled, investigative filmmaker Maggie MacGowen accepts a short-term contract to teach film production at a local community collegean interesting diversion, she thinks, until the next TV gig comes along. But if Maggie expects her sojourn in the ivory tower to be peaceful, she is dead wrong. Instead, she finds herself in the middle of an explosive power struggle. In the current era of budget cuts and fee increases, community college president Park Holloway arouses faculty and student animosity with his expensive building program especially an admin building derisively nicknamed the Taj MaHolloway. When Maggie finds the college president hanging in the buildings stairwell, suspicion falls not on her, but on her young friend Sly Miller. A world-class artist, his sculpture was supposed to be hanging in place of the body. Thats only the beginning of a twisty plot dealing with the aesthetics and business of art, a billion-dollar art-for-arms deal; political corruption and cronyism; and issues of art forgery and journalistic ethics, all capped off by a stunning denouement.Read more about this bookOrder this book now

What You Wish For
A Novel of Suspense
Janet DawsonISBN 978-1-56474-518-7292 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
History professor Lindsey Page has a quiet, well-ordered life, but its about to get complicated. Her daughter, with whom she has a troubled relationship, shows up on her doorstep. The immigrant woman Lindsey is interviewing for a book asks her for help in reclaiming the son taken from her during a massacre in her Salvadoran village. And her closest friends, the three women Lindsey has known since their college days in Berkeley where they witnessed the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, are hiding secrets that will forever change those friendships. Lindsey must grapple with questions of family identity, truth in wartime, the ethics of power for latter-day robber barons in the US and Central America, and the law of unforeseen consequences. Moving back and forth from the 1970s to the present, from the San Francisco Bay Area to El Salvador this sprawling saga follows Lindsey, her friends, and family through tumultuous political, social, and cultural changes and choices.Read more about this bookOrder this book now

Barnstorming
A Gail McCarthy Mystery
Laura CrumISBN 978-1-56474-508-8
192 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95Gail McCarthy has turned fifty, and is considering resuming her career as a horse veterinarian. Life interrupts her plans when she embarks on a solitary ride and finds a fellow equestrian shot dead. Gails friend, Detective Jeri Ward, heads up the investigation, and Gail is drawn into the escalating chain of events when a second rider is murdered. She must make sense of this threat to her beloved hills and trails... or she may be the snipers next victim.Read more about this bookOrder this book now
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Mix-Up in Miniature
A Miniature Mystery
Margaret GraceISBN 978-1-56474-510-1
248 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Geraldine Porter is thrilled to meet bestselling author and miniatures enthusiast Varena Young. The celebrity seems to seek friendship with Gerry and her crafts group, and makes a generous offer of a house from her collection for a library fund-raiser. But Young is suddenly murdered, and Gerry is left to investigate the crime. She and her eleven-year-old granddaughter Maddie delve for information on Youngs mysterious past, and they find a clue to her murder in a secret room...of a dollhouse.Read more about this bookOrder this book now

The Nightmare
A Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft
Nancy Means WrightISBN 978-1-56474-509-5
264 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: September 15, 2011Dismissed from her governess post in Ireland, Mary Wollstonecraft lands on her feet in London. After the 1792 publication of her ground-breaking Vindication of the Rights of Woman she gains entrée to a circle of celebrated artists and intellectuals. But Mary falls into obsession and infatuation with painter Henry Fuseli after his hauntingly erotic masterpiece The Nightmare is stolen. When a young artist is wrongfully accused and imprisoned, and a bluestocking friend is strangled, Marys passionate nature does not allow her to stand aside. Her quest for the truth will lead her into personal notoriety, a trip to a madhouse, and confrontations with more than one possible murderer.Read more about this bookOrder this book now

Murder in Burnt Orange
A Hilda Johansson Book
Jeanne M. DamsISBN 978-1-56474-503-3
256 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: September 15, 2011Hilda Johansson, formerly a housemaid and now a lady, is pregnant and extremely uncomfortable in the heat of a 1905 Indiana June. Shes making everyone else miserable, as well, so her family encourage her to look into some serious crimes to take her mind off her own problems. No one actually thinks she will be able to solve matters of arson and murder and train-wrecking, especially since custom forbids her leaving the house in her condition, but they reckon without Hildas quick mind and stubborn determination to see the job through.Read more about this bookOrder this book now

Bit Player
A Jeri Howard Mystery
Janet DawsonISBN 978-1-56474-494-4
282 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95Young and pretty, Jerusha Layne (Jeri Howard's grandmother) spent five years in Tinseltown, working as an extra and bit player in the movies, hoping for stardom. But she found love instead, marrying Ted Howard in 1942, after Pearl Harbor changed everything. But was there another reason Jerusha left town, involving an actor's unsolved murder? And how does this decades-old crime connect with movie memorabilia and modern-day murders?Read more about this bookOrder this book now

Shadows of a Down East Summer
An Antique Print Mystery
Lea WaitISBN 978-1-56474-497-5
282 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95In the summer of 1891 two young Maine women posed for artist Winslow Homer. What happened that summer, the secrets the women kept, and the lies they told, changed their families forever. Now one of their descendants has been murdered, leaving Maggie Summer the family papers that may finally reveal the truth. Her vision of a romantic vacation in Maine visiting Aunt Nettie and antiquing with beau Will Brewer turns into a murder investigation. But she must discover which, if any, of the families' perceptions are realities, before she, or someone she cares about, becomes the next victim.Read more about this bookOrder this book now